Running on One Shoe

I was looking right at my son when the starting pistol went off, but the loud bang still made me jump. Clearly, I was a newbie. Christian wasn’t. My 14-year-old had been running track for a year, but this was the first time I had attended one of his meets.

Christian started racing after being encouraged by his favorite teacher, who saw a flash of his athleticism during an in-class burpee competition. He began the season with a nine-and-a-half-minute mile, and finished at six and a half, winning the Most Improved award.

I didn’t witness any of it. His track meets always conflicted with my work schedule, and I wasn’t quite sure he really wanted me there. There was a quiet reserve in the way he mentioned his meets, a lack of expectation in his voice. Christian had always been eager to share facts—like how a galactic gas cloud supposedly smells like rum, and the efficiency of public transportation in Japan. He would muse aloud on existential ideas, like optimistic nihilism. He rarely shared his feelings. But when his new season started, I asked.

“Pretty much everyone’s parents go,” he replied.

My stomach tightened. Right.

As soon as one of his meets coincided with one of my days off, I went.

Now, bundled in layers and a bright blue rain jacket you couldn’t miss, I was perched on a tiny dry spot on the bleachers, my home for the next two hours, clutching hand warmers stuffed in my pockets.

I spotted Christian easily on the sidelines—a head taller than his friends, filling out the new track sweatshirt his little brother couldn’t stop admiring. He noticed me, too, but didn’t make eye contact. Eventually, he came up to say that his races wouldn’t start for a while.

“Great. I’ll be here.”

At the starting line, my son readied himself in Lane 1. He peeked over his shoulder at me, this time meeting my gaze as I framed the shot on my phone. He pushed his floppy brown hair off his forehead and leaned forward. His red singlet exposed his tensed back muscles, and bulging tanned calves flexed above his socks. At almost 15, he was nearing 6’1”, suddenly the shape of a man.

Ready.

When the pistol fired, his body responded (more gracefully than mine), settling into a comfortable second-place position through the first three laps. But on the final half lap, he suddenly began to hop. The cold air caught in my throat as I squinted across the football field, trying to make sense of what was happening. Had he turned an ankle? Then Christian bounced on one leg and, with one sharp kick, sent his shoe sailing into the lane behind him.

He wasn’t injured, I realized. More times than I can count, I’ve nagged him about tying his shoes securely. Now one had come loose – again.

“Christian!” a girl from his team screamed. “Where’s your shoe?!”

Keep going, I quietly cheered. You got this, hon.

His long legs returned to their quick clip, despite his right foot’s disadvantage. As he rounded the turn to the final stretch, I called out, “Go, Christian!” hoping he could hear me and that it might make a difference.

He crossed the finish line in third place—shoe first, his socked foot a step behind. I finally exhaled. A new personal record: 5:42. Leaning over on his knees, breathless and sweaty, he paused for a moment before sauntering across the soggy field to retrieve his missing size 14 shoe.

My throat still tight from cheering, I watched him from the wet bleachers.

I played sports growing up, but I’d never run a full mile until Christian was a toddler, when I started letting go of accumulated baby weight—and other things much heavier than pounds. In the evenings, I’d take him to the local junior high track and buckle him into the stroller for the slowest ride of his life. As we made our way around the track, step by step, I pushed myself to go longer stretches without stopping. Having spent too many years settled into a body and a life that no longer felt like mine, completing a mile became a symbol of freedom and new possibility. From his stroller, Christian had been a quiet observer of my race against myself.

That was before things fell apart. Before the divorce. Before he moved out of state with his dad, then back again. I never imagined having a gap year as a mother, or that my son’s memories would continue to be made, whether I was there to store them or not. No matter how often I visited, he looked and sounded different each time. Changes that would have been imperceptible in our daily life became glaring. Time, that unflinching force, kept running.

We’d both been around the track a few times. Now, twelve years later, and with only one shoe, Christian could finish eight laps in the time it used to take me to do four back then, even at my fastest. 

We’d both learned to move forward with what we had. I smiled, thinking of what he might accomplish with two shoes, and what I might have missed if I hadn’t shown up today.

“How do you do it?” I asked him after the meet. “You started the season at over nine minutes, and now you’re running a mile in under six. Have you learned a new technique?”

“Mmm,” he said, the deep, familiar teenage response that meant “I don’t know.” His dark brown eyes lowered to the ground, searching for the answer.

He shrugged, then glanced down at me, the corners of his lips lifting into a new, confident smile—just a few weeks into life after braces. “I just keep going.”